


Three Firsts

by fireflyeskies



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2018-02-20 20:37:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2442263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireflyeskies/pseuds/fireflyeskies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three first kisses in three parts.<br/>Kissing Carmilla isn't quite how Laura ever imagined it, and yes okay she can at least admit that she has imagined it. Once. Or twice. Really only a few times honest and no she's definitely never dreamt about it what on earth are you talking about? So when it does happen for the first time she's not really a hundred percent sure what she's expecting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Carmilla

**Author's Note:**

> Three first kisses in three parts, starts out as Carmilla x Laura, will end up as an ot3.

Kissing Carmilla isn't quite how Laura ever imagined it, and yes okay she can at least admit that she has imagined it. Once. Or twice. Really only a few times honest and no she's definitely never dreamt about it what on earth are you talking about? So when it does happen for the first time she's not really a hundred percent sure what she's expecting.

Whatever it was it certainly isn’t this. In all other aspects of her personality Carmilla is sharp and closed off and just occasionally aggressive. That person is the only one that Laura has known throughout the entirety of their oh-so-confusing relationship to one another. But this Carmilla? The one that looks at her as though she is everything that means anything in this world? Yeah, this person is new.

It’s the morning after their bedroom played host to a midnight vampire showdown, the sun is scarcely peeking above the horizon and the place is thankfully once again as quiet as Silas ever can be (which is to say, not quite silent but at least nothing is exploding). It was a long, long night as your average Thursday evenings go, even taking into account the bizarreness that Laura has become accustomed to in her life as of late.

After Carmilla bolted to give chase to Will and leaving a reeling Laura to wonder what the bloody hell _fire_ just happened there was an hour of dazedly contemplating the pros and cons of calling Danny or Lafontaine and Perry. Thankfully Carmilla herself returned before Laura could make a decision. In hindsight calling any of the others would have been an _awful_ idea. It seemed pretty likely that Danny might’ve actually ripped Carmilla into tiny little pieces, vampire or no, after hearing what she’d done. In fact, there was nothing to say she still might not when she heard but for now the others were all none the wiser.

Before Laura could begin to freak out about the bite (because really what the hell _was that?_ )Carmilla explained in almost desperate tones exactly what she’d been trying to do. The bite would apparently protect her from Carmilla’s mother, at least for now. Laura eventually calmed down and then calmed down a slightly frantic Carmilla who seemed convinced that there was no way that Laura could _possibly_ believe her.

Admittedly, Laura couldn’t even really give any good reason for why she did believe that Carmilla was trying to protect her. Most people of sound mind would’ve fled for the hills right about the point that the fangs came out to play, but not Laura. Not tiny, obstinate little Laura who despite the odds just never backs down. Somehow she believed her. Honestly, truly believed that this wasn’t just a part of some bigger plan to lure her in and then hand her over into the Big Bad’s clutches after all.

Pacified, at least for the time, Carmilla looked over the shallow indentations in Laura’s neck and then insisted that they were safe enough to get a night’s sleep. Carmilla had lain awake and watchful as Laura drifted slowly back into sleep beside her but she must’ve joined her at some point because she lay fast asleep when Laura awakes.

For a long while Laura hasn’t the heart to wake her, it isn’t often that you can catch Carmilla looking honestly peaceful. But in sleep she’s still and calm, breathing in and out slowly, one lock of dark hair brushing an arched brow. It’s almost impossible to believe that this girl sleeping so soundly at her side is the centuries old Countess Karnstein. A creature of the night who has seen empires rise and fall and witnessed the birth and death of countless new ages and eras. Like this she is small and unassuming though not vulnerable, never vulnerable. Even in sleep Carmilla radiates a kind of steady, strong presence. The kind that almost makes Laura believe that they’re safe.

“You’re staring cupcake”

Laura startles at the sound, so wrapped up in thought she hadn't noticed Carmilla’s breathing even out as she woke from her slumber.

“I-Yes” There’s not much point in denying it, she’s been staring for the best part of ten minutes.

Carmilla yawns and then stretches languidly beneath the sheets before settling back down to face Laura. With a tiny jolt Laura realises that they’re practically nose to nose. They haven’t been quite this close to one another since the, now horrifying, party disaster, not accounting for last night of course, which was so brief that it barely even counts.

“You’re still here” Carmilla says, so quietly it would have been silent had they not been so close that Laura could count every solitary eyelash on the other girl’s face.

“Where else would I be?” Laura mutters in reply, because really? Where else _would_ she be? If she’d trusted Carmilla enough last night to fall asleep next to her then clearly she trusted her enough to stay.

For a second Carmilla looks like she’s about to say something important, possibly all of the important things that the two of them have purposefully _not_ been saying all this time and instead saving up for some indeterminable later point. But something stops her and she pulls her gaze away from Laura for a moment and looks as though she’s fighting a war of emotions inside of her own head, weighing up a million options and still finding no solution.

“Carm” Laura murmurs softly, reaching up with one hand to gently brush at the errant lock of hair still obscuring the other girl’s eyes.

Carmilla glances back at her, torn and worrying at the corner of her bottom lip with the point of one sharpened tooth “Do you trust me?” she breathes out in a mess of half broken words.

There’s a beat where Laura holds Carmilla’s gaze softly, looking for any trick or lie that might be hiding there behind dark eyes that for once look so genuinely earnest “Yes”.

And then all of a sudden there is one uncharacteristically gentle hand cupping her jaw, the other threading its way through the strands of her hair and Laura thinks she might’ve actually forgotten how to breathe because Carmilla's kissing her and _wow_ is that better than anything she’s ever imagined.

The thought has indeed crossed her mind before, many times more than she’d ever actually admit to but it’s never like this. It’s never this languid rhythm of give and take where Carmilla is the one giving so much and taking no more than what is offered. Never in any dream did Laura imagine Carmilla like this.

Carmilla who is all cruel jokes and sharp jabs apparently does possess the capacity to be gentle and careful when you might expect her to be all teeth and tongue and rough edges. Not, that Laura is necessarily _opposed_ to such things, but right now in this moment with the sun barely above the horizon and last night’s events still fresh in mind? Soft and slow is just fine.

When they finally come up for air, not that Camilla hardly needs it mind you, she pulls back barely an inch to look at Laura. A look that says a thousand things that Laura knows she can’t voice with words and possibly may never be able to, no matter how much trust there is between them. It’s a look that makes Laura believe for the first time in days, weeks even, that things might actually work out okay in the end.


	2. Danny

Kissing Danny is exactly how Laura always imagined it. Because of course it is, Danny is good and honest and gentle (with Laura anyway) and so of _course_ it’s all sweetness and light. At least it is to begin with.

It happens late one night in the midst of a Buffy marathon initiated by Laura in a bid to make a kind of apology to Danny. The whole business with the vampire kidnapping had Danny on edge for days and after Carmilla was freed it only got worse. She’d been in a foul mood for days now and it was starting to wear a bit thin. Laura understood that the other girl was angry and actually had every right to be honestly. But she was not however, enjoying the cold shoulder and having to awkwardly negotiate peace anytime Danny and Carmilla happened to be in the same room together.

So with one night of a Carmilla free dorm room, hours of their favourite show (it’s totally for research purposes honestly) and chocolate that Danny will pretend to turn her nose up at before sneaking some when she thinks Laura isn’t looking. It all looks set up to be a perfectly normal, laidback night. No arguments, no crises, no centuries old supernatural beings pitching a riot somewhere. Just Laura and Danny and the TV.

At least it starts out that way. They’re half way through their second episode and the chocolate stash when Laura realises that Danny isn’t even watching the screen anymore. Sure she’s pretending to, she keeps sort of surreptitiously looking up and down between the screen and Laura’s face, clearly convinced that Laura hasn’t noticed the annoyingly repetitive motion. They continue like this for another few minutes until Laura has really just had enough and drops the half a cookie she was considering devouring and turns to look at Danny.

“Okay what gives?”

Danny’s head snaps up from pretend watching the show, all wide eyes and overly innocent smiles that, while adorable, don’t have Laura fooled for a second.

“What?”

“You’ve been staring at me for the past half hour Danny, so what’s up?” says Laura, reaching over to pause the show that they’ve both obviously abandoned all pretence of actually watching.

“I just… I kinda just get the feeling that something is going on here-”

Laura scoffs and begins to interrupt whatever Danny was about to say next “Danny there’s always something going on here, this is _Silas_ ”

“No, no I meant _here_ , with you. With you and Carmilla” Danny finishes eventually, the words all tumbling out in one breath and a slight sneer over their vampire friend’s name.

And then its Laura’s turn to stutter her words out, flustered in a way that she is realising surfaces all too readily around Danny “Oh. Oh. Uh, well”

This was _not_ a conversation that Laura was expecting to be having with Danny, or anyone, any time soon, and certainly not now. She and Carmilla have fallen into an odd pattern of going about their daily business as per usual, interrupted by the odd heated look or brief kiss every now and then that Laura still doesn’t know what to make of. She certainly hadn't realised that Danny had noticed anything out of place.

“Because I kind of thought that well, _we_ had something going on you know? Or we were about to anyway” Danny lets out a tired sigh, one hand shifting through that gloriously red hair and Laura has to all but pinch herself to stop from wondering what it might feel like under her own fingers.

“Is this all my fault? Should I have said something sooner? I mean I just sort of assumed that you knew I liked you and you liked me and oh goddess I'm rambling, I never ramble, shut up Danny”

And there it is. An admittedly jumbled up and slightly out of breath confession that Laura has been waiting on for _weeks_ and oh god, _why_ has it taken them so long? Laura could think of so many times that a boring class or a slow afternoon has been whiled away just dreaming about the day when those words might tumble from Danny’s lips. So of course it only happens after Laura has found herself embroiled in a bizarre _thing_ that she can’t even put a name to (relationship? Not quite. Friends? Barely. Whatever she has going with Carmilla, Laura knows no adequate term to properly describe it) with her vampire roommate.

“I do like you! I mean I did, I mean I still do I just – oh this is a mess isn’t it” Laura says before stopping abruptly and slapping herself internally because _really_ , how did this all get so messed up?

Never in her entire nineteen years of life could she have imagined that there would ever come a point in time where she might have to choose between two girls who both wanted her. Two ridiculously attractive girls who both wanted Laura. Who were both, in their own ways, good, amazing people. Okay so perhaps Carmilla isn’t exactly _good_ but she isn’t exactly bad either, besides leaving her clothes all over the floor and refusing to do her share of the chores she isn’t entirely amoral.

“I like you both okay. And believe me I'm just as confused by it all as you are” Laura says finally, looking up hesitantly at Danny, half expecting the other girl to say something else about Carmilla or just outright get up and leave.

She doesn’t. She just pins her with an intense gaze, searching every inch of Laura’s face before laughing short and sharp under her breath and looking away with a shake of her head. There’s a heavy beat of silence and then Danny seems to come to a decision somewhere in the miasma of her thoughts and mutters something unintelligible under her breath that sounds suspiciously like ‘fuck’ and ‘Carmilla’.

In one swift motion Danny moves both hands to either side of Laura’s head and gives her another of those searing looks that has every inch of Laura’s skin shivering. Time has stopped and Laura is almost painfully hyperaware of everything that Danny is right now. The rough callouses on the palms of her hands from hours and hours of javelin practice and archery and whatever else the Summer Society gets up to. The faint dusting of freckles that dance up and over the peaks of high cheekbones. The way that the tables seem to have been monumentally turned here and Danny looks as though she wants to eat her alive.

‘These girls are actually going to kill me’ is the last coherent thought that pounds its way through Laura’s mind before Danny’s lips are on hers and all thought and sense is rushing south along with all of the blood in her body. To begin with Danny is gentle and careful and holds her as though scared she might break her if she grips too tight or kisses too hard.

But with absence of thought comes absence of things like self-restraint and so Laura can’t really be held responsible for the way she leans into Danny and grasps at broad shoulders and rakes her fingernails down the skin she finds there urging the other girl to just _kiss her_ dammit. Laura is well aware she’s small, tiny really compared to Danny, but she’s not made from porcelain for god’s sake.

And then they really are kissing, full on hands in hair and winding their way up shirts and over bare skin kissing. There is only the barest sliver of a worry in the back of Laura’s mind where she hopes to all that is good and holy in the world that no one (one person in particular) walks in any time soon. But then there’s a tongue in her mouth and hands hovering around the top button of her shirt and the thought is gone, gone, gone along with apparently her common sense.


	3. Laura

Being kissed by both Danny and Carmilla at once is so far beyond any idle imaginations or fantasies that Laura is pretty sure she may actually stop breathing sometime soon. With Danny at her back all strong hands and soft kisses peppered up and down the nape of her neck and Carmilla giving her the filthiest eyes she’s ever seen the evening is definitely starting to look up.

After many an excruciating conversation and or argument a decision was made and some semblance of peace was finally restored to room 307 and, Laura’s life. The stress of having to try and somehow juggle both Danny and Carmilla’s affections (not a position she _ever_ thought she’d be in in a million years) had quickly become too much and there had come a moment where Laura finally broke.

Using every bit of her entire five feet and two inches to get the other two girls to just shut up and sit down and listen for a minute they finally arrived at a compromise that everybody could live with. It was obvious that Laura couldn’t even begin to try and choose between them and moreover, didn’t really _want_ to choose. Which is how Laura Hollis, nineteen year old, overwhelmed and confused journalism major, Laura Hollis ended up dating two girls at once. One of which just so happened to be a three hundred year old undead supernatural being and the other her supremely gorgeous lit TA.

As relationships go the arrangement actually works out rather well, better than any of them could ever have guessed really. When they aren’t out saving the campus from this week’s latest earth-shattering mini apocalypse they manage to split their time reasonably equally. After-class pie dates with Danny continued and there were evenings spent back at the dorm in Carmilla’s arms just enjoying the rare peace and quiet whenever the cosmos aligned to grant them some.

Danny drags Laura out some weekends insisting that yes, she _absolutely_ needs to be taught how to hike or climb or kayak or whatever ridiculous ‘fun’ outdoor activity Danny could think up each week. Each week hoping that she might find one that Laura didn’t suck at. Eventually they come to the sad conclusion that Laura just _isn’t_ an outdoorsy type person and that perhaps just a movie night might suit them both better (and might also lessen the chance of broken bones and bruises).

Carmilla’s idea of a romantic night together tends to be more, well, romantic. The whole ‘three hundred year old vampire’ thing isn’t always glaringly obvious to the casual observer, something made abundantly clear by a deep love of contemporary Swedish death metal and seventies punk rock. Something that incidentally is actually just deeply annoying when it’s three am and you’ve got a paper due tomorrow and you can’t sleep because Carmilla decided that now is _absolutely_ the best time to listen to the entire discography of The Ramones at full volume.

But when the mood strikes she can do romantic in a very classical, I-was-born-in-the-seventeenth-century kind of way. They go walking in the woods that surround campus in the dead of night and Carmilla shows her all of the hidden places she’s discovered from having spent years and years of her life at Silas. All of the little hideaways and retreats that were hers and hers alone when the strain of living under mother’s tyrannical rule became too much and a secret place all of her own was needed.

They look at the stars and Carmilla tells her stories of lives past, always the good ones, the pleasant memories of cities she’s visited and scholars and artists and philosophers hundreds of years dead now. Never the bad ones, no matter how Laura protests that she’s no fainting damsel, she never tells of the bad memories, Laura doesn’t need those.

All said they make it work, their only moderately dysfunctional little trio _works_. At least it works most of the time. Laura still has to play referee to her girlfriends more than she’d like and simply cannot understand why they can’t just get on. Leaving Danny and Carmilla alone in a room together is usually a disaster just waiting to happen and so Laura tries to avoid it as much as possible. They coexist just fine as long as Laura is within reach to stop any cutting remarks and sly jabs from turning into all out warfare, but alone? World War Three in the making.

So when one Saturday evening Danny comes looking for Laura, likely to drag her off to the Summer Society house for whatever she’s concocted for the night, and finds only Carmilla lazing around their room things get a little dangerous. Laura’s been out all day off on some hare-brained scheme with Lafontaine involving a network of tunnels under the Science building that absolutely needed to be mapped out and Carmilla is _bored._

It starts with glaring and a few short sharp digs at each other, both playing at their little game of who can antagonise the other more. From there it only escalates further and further until the digs are more cutting than teasing and they’re stood toe to toe fuming in each other’s faces (or in Carmilla’s case, snarling around barely withdrawn teeth at somewhere approximately level with Danny’s shoulders).

Which is what Laura walks in to find at the end of another of her eighteen hour workdays, beat from a full day’s adventuring and wishing for nothing more than to sit down, relax and maybe coax Carmilla into reading to her. Instead she comes face to face with Twilight: The Rematch going down in the middle of her bedroom. Needless to say, she’s not pleased.

“Oh get real princess, you can’t really believe your mangy mutt ass deserves her any more than I do” Carmilla snarls out, the white flash of teeth just visible.

“Yeah? And what makes you so special Morticia Addams? What makes you so much more worthy of her?” Danny counters back every bit as visibly angry as the other girl, fingers coiled tight into fists and the barest hint of a growl curling up around the corners of her own lips.

“What the _hell_ is this?” are Laura’s first words when she walks into the room, looking between the pair of them in disbelief.

They at least have the good grace to look a little sheepish and pull back from one another a few inches. And then they’re immediately talking over each other and back to glaring daggers as voices raise higher and higher once again.

“Okay stop, stop! It is five thirty, I have had a _very_ long day, I have two hundred pages to read before tomorrow and I do _not_ need this right now.  If you really just can’t resist duking it out with one another, take it elsewhere” Laura huffs at them, her hopeful mood thoroughly ruined, before pushing past them to drop down at her desk.

“And just for the record, I’m a person, not a freaking trophy. If either of you carry on like that, arguing over my, _honour_ or whatever, then neither of you will deserve me. Okay?”

There’s a moment of silence then where Danny and Carmilla shuffle about and share a look with one another that has become unfortunately commonplace for them in past weeks. It’s the, oh fuck we pissed off our tiny girlfriend and now we’re _both_ in the doghouse (“Ha, get it Lawrence? Because you’re” – “Shut up Karnstein”) look that has them pretty much begging for forgiveness in minutes flat usually.

It’s in moments like these though that Danny and Carmilla are beginning to find things that they can agree on, ground that they both share with one another. Annoying Laura perhaps isn’t the best way to bond with one another but until they can make it to a slightly friendlier stage in their relationship it pulls them together close enough.

Carmilla growls a short sigh and then turns to Danny “Truce Lassie?” she mutters holding out one hand.

Danny frowns at her for a second more before looking to Laura and then back and uncrossing her arms to grasp Carmilla’s offered hand “Fine. But enough with the dog jokes okay?” she says, holding her grip on Carmilla’s fingers until the other girls rolls her eyes and nods like it causes her a tremendous amount of trouble to do so.

United, albeit reluctantly, they turn on Laura this time wearing matching grins that smack of nothing but pure mischief and devilry. In one swift move Danny has Laura pulled up from where she’s obliviously tapping away at her laptop and snakes her arms around the smaller girl’s waist.

“Uhh guys? Still pissed at you. Both of you” Laura says, stumbling her words out in a way that indicates she isn’t nearly as angry as she’d like to pretend.

“Shhh cupcake. Just relax” Carmilla all but _purrs_ in her ear, hot breath tickling trails down her neck and setting every inch of her skin alight.

At any other moment Laura might have taken a minute to revel in the fact that her girlfriends are actually working together and cooperating on something for once. But seeing as that something happens to be Laura, the idea barely even registers on her list of priorities, it’s being beaten pretty soundly by the sensation of Carmilla’s teeth scraping up and across her jaw and the way Danny’s hands are quickly sliding south with intent, burning hot trails over the sliver of skin where her shirt is riding up.

Putting aside the fact that she really was supposed to be annoyed with them right now Laura resigns herself to just enjoying this newfound…whatever it is. Carmilla’s lips are insistent on her own and Danny's are behind her mapping out patterns over her shoulders, two sets of hands weaving their way up and down her sides, seeking out all of the places that both girls knew would elicit such _wonderful_ sounds.

As quickly as Laura starts to enjoy the parallel universe she’s found herself in her brain dimly registers that Carmilla has pulled away to lean over her shoulder and Danny has gone uncharacteristically still at her back. Her eyes flutter open and she fully expects to find the two of them locked in another glaring match again and…oh. Oh well that wasn’t what she expected.

They’re locked together for sure but neither look to be complaining, not with Carmilla’s tongue licking its way into Danny’s mouth, her hands fisting knots in her hair and drawing out a low rumble of a growl that Laura is pretty sure she’s never heard from the older girl before.

“Er guys? Still here?” she says, cursing her voice for betraying her and coming out a whole lot higher than she meant it to.

But Danny and Carmilla don’t appear to be listening any more. In fact, they don’t even appear to be on this plane of existence anymore, quickly becoming more and more entangled with one another and turning away from Laura and falling back towards her bed.

Laura is left swaying slightly in their wake looking on open mouthed and if it were at all possible even more aroused than she was ten seconds ago “So you’re just gonna…in my bed…without me?”

Carmilla raises her head from where she’s sucking a particularly impressive looking hickey onto Danny’s neck and shoots her a, not entirely malicious, long-suffering glare before holding out one hand towards her, the other still roving halfway up Danny’s shirt.

Laura gulps, gives over a whole split second to contemplate every mind bogglingly bizarre thing that has happened to her since joining Silas University and concludes that this by far tops them all. Then, shakes herself awake and reaches out to take that hand and join her girlfriends in whatever this thing is that they’ve begun.

Two months ago Laura Hollis, naïve provincial Laura Hollis would’ve called you crazy if you’d said this was where college life would take her. But now? Now she thinks she might like it after all.

                                                                                                                    


End file.
